55 54, see that person ahead? Run him over! __1
Translator: 549690339 I
“Wife, drive slowly, no rush!”
“Take it slow, look at the rearview mirror more, and observe what’s ahead.”
“Hey, do you see the person up ahead?”
Li Jinwen gripped the steering wheel tightly, not turning her head, and nodded, replying, “Um, I see them.”
“Run them over.”
Ah?!
Startled, Li Jinwen muttered, “But, husband, that’s not okay, right?”
Lin Mo rubbed his forehead and said helplessly, “If you know it’s not okay, why don’t you hurry up and hit the brakes? Change lanes, keep your distance!”
“Mom…don’t be nervous, you’re scaring me…” Lin Xiaoxiao, sitting in the backseat, also straightened up, her eyes darting around like little radars, anxiously scanning from side to side.
The family of three, who had just been immersed in the happiness of picking up their new car, were now all feeling complicated emotions.
The incident began quite simply.
Lin Mo thought, now that his wife had a driver’s license and they had bought a car, it was time for her to practice more so she could drive out on her own in the future.
But once they hit the road, problems started cropping up.
First, Li Jinwen had adjusted the seat very high and close to the steering wheel, as if she were going to feed it milk.
Once she had finally adjusted her seat and the rearview mirrors with some difficulty, the car slowly got onto the road. Perhaps because it was her first time with an electric car, or her first time driving their own car, Li Jinwen became extremely nervous.
Either she couldn’t maintain a steady speed, or she would occasionally slam on the brakes hard, causing the ride inside the car to feel like a pirate ship, swaying from side to side.
This was only possible because it was an electric car; had it been a manual transmission gasoline car, they’d probably still be at the dealership’s entrance, stuck in an endless loop of stalling and restarting.
With a troubled expression, Li Jinwen said, “Husband, I really feel like driving is too hard. Maybe you should drive instead!”
“No, everyone starts as a beginner. Just practice, it won’t be a big problem with me in the passenger seat. Besides, you used to be pretty good with gas cars,” Lin Mo reassured her, holding onto the handbrake with one hand while the other rested on the steering wheel, helping Li Jinwen get familiar with the electric car.
It has to be said,
the Wuling Mini did one thing very well: the driver and front passenger seats were connected and very close together. In any emergency, Lin Mo could just stretch out his leg to reach the brakes.
Furthermore, the car’s electronic control system was up to par; Lin Mo had already tested it. Even when pulling the electronic parking brake at a speed of 50 km/h, the car wouldn’t come to a sudden halt, but rather would disengage the drive system and come to a stop at a relatively gentle speed, as if pressing the brakes.
The car was also very small,
and after practicing on less busy roads for over half an hour, Li Jinwen had mostly stopped slamming on the brakes abruptly.
After all, she had originally obtained a Cl license; it was just that she hadn’t driven much since then, and her skills had become a bit rusty.
“Good, you’re getting the hang of it. Now we can try driving on the main roads.”
Lin Mo turned on the navigation on his phone, setting the destination to Da Run Fa Supermarket at 601 Nanting Highway, Nanqiao Town, and continued to instruct Li Jinwen on how to drive.
Normally a twenty to thirty-minute journey, but by the time they arrived at the supermarket, it was almost 3 p.m.
After getting out of the car, Li Jinwen’s legs were so sore she could barely walk, as if she had done some heavy labor. Leaning on Lin Mo, she rested for a while before gradually recovering.
It wasn’t from fatigue,
but mainly due to leg cramps caused by excessive tension.
This had happened to Lin Mo too when he first learned to drive, pressing the clutch so fiercely.
“Ah…”
With a sigh, Li Jinwen said, feeling like she had narrowly escaped disaster, “Good thing I didn’t let you buy that BYD Qin. If it were that big beast, I really couldn’t have handled it!”
Only now did Lin Mo belatedly realize that when buying the car, he had only considered the performance and price, forgetting to consider whether his wife could handle it.
Well,
by some fluke, they had ended up buying a car that was just right for their current situation.
Honestly, whether it was pricey or not didn’t really matter. It was the same old saying: they weren’t very rich at the moment, and the car was just for commuting. In the future, when they had more money, they could always switch to a different one.
“It’s okay. Just practice more and you’ll get there. Everyone has to start at this stage, and you’ve already made a lot of progress,” Lin Mo said, patting their daughter’s head. “Sweetie, praise your mom.”
After thinking for a while, Lin Xiaoxiao said, “Mom, riding in the car you drive is great. I completely lost track of time.”
“Ah? What do you mean?”
Lin Mo couldn’t help but laugh, saying, “She’s basically scolding you in a roundabout way, meaning that riding in your car is too nerve-wracking, and she wouldn’t even dare to check the time.”
“Lin Xiaoxiao!!!”
“Mom, my bad… You need to keep practicing driving, so later when I go to school, I can take your car, many of my classmates are driven to school by their moms!”
“Mmm, mom will do her best!”
They wandered around Da Run Fa Supermarket for several hours.
Gold was purchased,
but the gold Li Jinwen bought was of the smallest possible weight, and she even considered giving up on buying gold when the salesperson recommended gold wrapped in silver due to its high price.
The reason was simply that it was too expensive.
Only with the combined persuasion of Lin Mo and Lin Xiaoxiao did they finally buy less than 25 grams of jewelry, costing a little over 17,000 yuan.
The price of gold was too high, with the bank’s price being over 400 yuan per gram, and it was even more expensive in the jewelry store, plus the craftsmanship fee.
It totaled up to three pieces of jewelry, a pair of rings weighing 9 grams, and a gold necklace weighing more than 15 grams.
Afterward, the family had a meal and then got back in their own car, laughing and joking on the way home.
By the time they got home, it was starting to get dark.
Even though it was an old neighborhood in the suburbs, parking spaces were still in high demand. Buying a parking space outright was exorbitantly expensive, whereas renting one cost 450 yuan a month, along with some management fees.
The cost of parking spaces in Rakshasa City was a mystery, fluctuating wildly and seemingly unrelated to the location or whether the housing was luxurious.
Even in upscale neighborhoods near Jing’an Temple, where the price per square meter reached over 120,000 yuan, monthly rent for a parking space might cost only about 800 yuan, whereas in Qibao, parking fees were even lower than in Jiuting or Huaxin.
Now that it was late, no one from the property management was around, so renting a parking spot for the day was out of the question.
They had to park their car in a public space on the roadside and then walked home.
Li Jinwen kept turning back every three steps, nervously asking, “Honey, is it safe to park here? What if someone accidentally scrapes it at night?”
“Well, it is a bit unsafe,” Lin Mo said with a smile, finding his wife’s concern a bit cute. “But we can’t exactly carry it into the living room, can we?”
“That’s easy for you to say, but what if a dog comes by? I heard dog urine is highly corrosive and can easily damage the tires, and our car is new,” Li Jinwen cautioned. “Why don’t you find a couple of planks and cover the outer tires?”
Lin Mo:”…”
He really wanted to say that cars are made to be driven and won’t break down that easily.
But then he thought, they’ve been together for so long and had finally bought a car, so it was normal to be extra cautious.
They’d been scrimping and saving all these years; it would be strange not to be frugal.
“All right, all right, I know. I’ll go find some now,” he agreed.
Far from defying his wife’s wishes, Lin Mo quickly found a couple of rotten planks on the roadside, ran back to the car, and covered the two outer tires.
Seeing this, Li Jinwen finally felt relieved, and then the family, happy and content, carried their many purchases from the day back home.
No sooner had they stepped through the door than Lin Mo and Li Jinwen, exhausted, collapsed onto the sofa. Age had caught up with them; they couldn’t handle the strain of a whole day out, which left them utterly drained.
Lin Xiaoxiao, on the other hand, was full of energy and showed no signs of fatigue whatsoever.
Indeed, a new body was more resilient.
Watching her, both Lin Mo and Li Jinwen were envious. They wanted to ask their precious daughter, aren’t you tired at all?
Before they could speak, Lin Xiaoxiao came over, smiling and saying, “Dad, can I use your phone for a bit?”
“What for?”
“Well… I want to call Grandpa and tell him we’ve got a car now, so we can take him traveling everywhere.”
Ah,
the affection definitely skipped a generation.
Lin Mo handed his phone to his daughter while also remembering something. He wondered how his dad’s construction payments were going